Felix Landau
Encyclopedia
Felix Landau was a SS
Hauptscharführer
, a member of an Einsatzkommando
during World War II
, based first in Lwów, Poland
(today Lviv
, Ukraine
), and later in Drohobycz. He was a "central figure in the Nazi program of the extermination of Galician Jews
". He is known for his daily diary
and for temporarily sparing the life of the Jewish artist Bruno Schulz
in 1942.
Landau liked Schulz's art and supplied him with protection and extra food. In return, he ordered the artist to paint a set of murals for his young son's bedroom, depicting scenes from the Brothers Grimm
fairy tales.
and was expelled from apprentice boarding school (run by a Catholic lay order) for active recruitment activities. In 1930 he joined Austrian Bundesheer (2nd Dragoner Squadron). In March 1931 he joined NSDAP and in May became a political leader of a local Nazi army district. In June 1933 was expelled from Bundesheer for Nazi activities. From June 1933 to April 1934 Felix Landau was a member of Sturmabteilung
(SA), after that in SS. For participation in the assassination of Austrian chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss
(1934) he was imprisoned. Upon his release in 1937, he renewed Nazi activities and had to flee to avoid another arrest. Landau became a naturalized German citizen, got married and worked as a police assistant in Gestapo
.
in Radom
governed by the General Government
where he met typist Gertrude, to whom he later addressed his letters.
In June 1941, Felix Landau volunteered for Einsatzkommando service. He began his diary in July 1941, interspersing sentimental letters to his fiancée with detailed records of his participation in atrocities of what later came to be known as the Holocaust
. He describes "shooting exercises" and "wild actions", shooting sprees wherein he and his men would pick off random Jews who worked nearby or passed by on the street. In one such event in November 1942, Landau killed the personal dentist of a fellow officer, Karl Günther. In revenge, Günther caught up with Bruno Schulz, then under the protection of Landau, and shot him twice in the head. According to Schulz's friend Izydor Friedman, who witnessed the death, this happened at the corner of Czacki and Mickiewicz Streets. Later, Günther told Landau: "You killed my Jew - I killed yours."
At the end of 1941, he lived with Gertrude in an aristocratic villa. He divorced his first wife in 1942 and married Gertrude in 1943 (divorced in 1946). Until May 1943, Landau was in charge of organizing Jewish labor.
.
In 1959, Landau was arrested and accused of the massacres. He was condemned to life imprisonment in 1962 at the Stuttgart
Assize Court.
Schutzstaffel
The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...
Hauptscharführer
Hauptscharführer
Hauptscharführer was a Nazi paramilitary rank which was used by the Schutzstaffel between the years of 1934 and 1945. The rank was the highest enlisted rank of the SS, with the exception of the special Waffen-SS rank of Sturmscharführer....
, a member of an Einsatzkommando
Einsatzkommando
During World War II, the Nazi German Einsatzkommandos were a sub-group of five Einsatzgruppen mobile killing squads—up to 3,000 men each—usually composed of 500-1,000 functionaries of the SS and Gestapo, whose mission was to kill Jews, Romani, communists and the NKVD collaborators in the captured...
during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, based first in Lwów, Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
(today Lviv
Lviv
Lviv is a city in western Ukraine. The city is regarded as one of the main cultural centres of today's Ukraine and historically has also been a major Polish and Jewish cultural center, as Poles and Jews were the two main ethnicities of the city until the outbreak of World War II and the following...
, Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
), and later in Drohobycz. He was a "central figure in the Nazi program of the extermination of Galician Jews
Galician Jews
Galician Jews or Galitzianer Jews are a subdivision of the Ashkenazim geographically originating from Galicia, from western Ukraine and from the south-eastern corner of Poland . Galicia proper, which was inhabited by Ukrainians, Poles and Jews, was a royal province within Austro-Hungarian empire...
". He is known for his daily diary
Diary
A diary is a record with discrete entries arranged by date reporting on what has happened over the course of a day or other period. A personal diary may include a person's experiences, and/or thoughts or feelings, including comment on current events outside the writer's direct experience. Someone...
and for temporarily sparing the life of the Jewish artist Bruno Schulz
Bruno Schulz
Bruno Schulz was a Polish writer, fine artist, literary critic and art teacher born to Jewish parents, and regarded as one of the great Polish-language prose stylists of the 20th century. Schulz was born in Drohobycz, in the province of Galicia then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and spent...
in 1942.
Landau liked Schulz's art and supplied him with protection and extra food. In return, he ordered the artist to paint a set of murals for his young son's bedroom, depicting scenes from the Brothers Grimm
Brothers Grimm
The Brothers Grimm , Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm , were German academics, linguists, cultural researchers, and authors who collected folklore and published several collections of it as Grimm's Fairy Tales, which became very popular...
fairy tales.
Early career
In 1925, Landau joined National Socialist YouthHitler Youth
The Hitler Youth was a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party. It existed from 1922 to 1945. The HJ was the second oldest paramilitary Nazi group, founded one year after its adult counterpart, the Sturmabteilung...
and was expelled from apprentice boarding school (run by a Catholic lay order) for active recruitment activities. In 1930 he joined Austrian Bundesheer (2nd Dragoner Squadron). In March 1931 he joined NSDAP and in May became a political leader of a local Nazi army district. In June 1933 was expelled from Bundesheer for Nazi activities. From June 1933 to April 1934 Felix Landau was a member of Sturmabteilung
Sturmabteilung
The Sturmabteilung functioned as a paramilitary organization of the National Socialist German Workers' Party . It played a key role in Adolf Hitler's rise to power in the 1920s and 1930s...
(SA), after that in SS. For participation in the assassination of Austrian chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss
Engelbert Dollfuss
Engelbert Dollfuss was an Austrian Christian Social and Patriotic Front statesman. Serving previously as Minister for Forest and Agriculture, he ascended to Federal Chancellor in 1932 in the midst of a crisis for the conservative government...
(1934) he was imprisoned. Upon his release in 1937, he renewed Nazi activities and had to flee to avoid another arrest. Landau became a naturalized German citizen, got married and worked as a police assistant in Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
.
World War II and service in Einsatzkommando
In 1940, Landau transferred to KdS/SDSicherheitsdienst
Sicherheitsdienst , full title Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS, or SD, was the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. The organization was the first Nazi Party intelligence organization to be established and was often considered a "sister organization" with the...
in Radom
Radom
Radom is a city in central Poland with 223,397 inhabitants . It is located on the Mleczna River in the Masovian Voivodeship , having previously been the capital of Radom Voivodeship ; 100 km south of Poland's capital, Warsaw.It is home to the biennial Radom Air Show, the largest and...
governed by the General Government
General Government
The General Government was an area of Second Republic of Poland under Nazi German rule during World War II; designated as a separate region of the Third Reich between 1939–1945...
where he met typist Gertrude, to whom he later addressed his letters.
In June 1941, Felix Landau volunteered for Einsatzkommando service. He began his diary in July 1941, interspersing sentimental letters to his fiancée with detailed records of his participation in atrocities of what later came to be known as the Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
. He describes "shooting exercises" and "wild actions", shooting sprees wherein he and his men would pick off random Jews who worked nearby or passed by on the street. In one such event in November 1942, Landau killed the personal dentist of a fellow officer, Karl Günther. In revenge, Günther caught up with Bruno Schulz, then under the protection of Landau, and shot him twice in the head. According to Schulz's friend Izydor Friedman, who witnessed the death, this happened at the corner of Czacki and Mickiewicz Streets. Later, Günther told Landau: "You killed my Jew - I killed yours."
At the end of 1941, he lived with Gertrude in an aristocratic villa. He divorced his first wife in 1942 and married Gertrude in 1943 (divorced in 1946). Until May 1943, Landau was in charge of organizing Jewish labor.
After World War II
In 1946, a former worker recognized him in Linz. Landau was arrested by the Americans but escaped from Glasenbach prison camp in August 1947. Under the name of Rudolf Jaschke he started an interior decorating company in BavariaBavaria
Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...
.
In 1959, Landau was arrested and accused of the massacres. He was condemned to life imprisonment in 1962 at the Stuttgart
Stuttgart
Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....
Assize Court.
Quotes from the diary
- Lwow - 5 July 1941... There were hundreds of Jews walking along the street with blood pouring down their faces, holes in their heads, their hands broken and their eyes hanging out of their sockets. They were covered in blood. Some were carrying others who had collapsed. We went to the citadel; there we saw things that few people have ever seen. At the entrance to the citadel there were soldiers standing guard. They were holding clubs as thick as a man's wrist and were lashing out and hitting anyone who crossed their path. The Jews were pouring out of the entrance. There were rows of Jews lying one on top of the other like pigs, whimpering horribly. The Jews kept streaming out of the citadel completely covered in blood. We stopped and tried to see who was in charge of the Kommando. Nobody. Someone had let the Jews go. They were just being hit out of rage and hatred...
- Drohobycz - 12 July 1941... At 6:00 in the morning I was suddenly awoken from a deep sleep. Report for an execution. Fine, so I'll just play executioner and then gravedigger, why not?... Twenty-three had to be shot, amongst them ... two women ... We had to find a suitable spot to shoot and bury them. After a few minutes we found a place. The death candidates assembled with shovels to dig their own graves. Two of them were weeping. The others certainly have incredible courage... Strange, I am completely unmoved. No pity, nothing. That's the way it is and then it's all over... Valuables, watches and money are put into a pile... The two women are lined up at one end of the grave ready to be shot first... As the women walked to the grave they were completely composed. They turned around. Six of us had to shoot them. The job was assigned thus: three at the heart, three at the head. I took the heart. The shots were fired and the brains whizzed through the air. Two in the head is too much. They almost tear it off...
Further reading
- Love letters of a Nazi murderer in Lemberg and Drohobycz by Felix Landau (Yad VashemYad VashemYad Vashem is Israel's official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, established in 1953 through the Yad Vashem Law passed by the Knesset, Israel's parliament....
), 1987 ASIN B0007C502 O - The Holocaust: Origins, Implementation and Aftermath (Rewriting Histories) by Omer BartovOmer BartovOmer Bartov is the John P. Birkelund Distinguished Professor of European History and Professor of History and Professor of German Studies at Brown University....
(pp. 185–203 contain excerpts from Felix Landau's diary and a biographical note) - Masters of Death: The SS-Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust by Richard Rhodes (Vintage, 2003 reprint ed.) ISBN 0-375-70822-7
- The Second World War: A Complete History by Martin Gilbert
- The Third Reich: A New History by Michael Burleigh
- The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945 by Michael Burleigh (Cambridge University Press, 1991 reprint ed) ISBN 0-521-39802-9
External links
- Yad Vashem not displaying Bruno Schulz Holocaust art by Amiran Barkat (Ha'aretz April 7, 2005), (International Survey of Jewish Monuments)
- Ukraine - Jewish Art (PBS-NPRNPRNPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...
) - Faces in the Textual Neighborhood: Two Poles and a Lithuanian by Adam Zachary NewtonAdam Zachary NewtonAdam Zachary Newton isChair of the Department of English at Yeshiva University and the former Jane and Rowland Blumberg Centennial Professor in English at the University of Texas at Austin....
, University of Texas, Austin - Finding Pictures Austrian Holocaust